Re: 2 sides of the story

If you looked more closer - Lutris is a launcher system(similar to steam, blizzard and all the other) - the difference is - it has a repostiory of installer scripts - some that tie to gog, some to steam others prompt you for the source of the installer.

Looking at a random 3ds installer - it asks the user to point it to the ROM. So there is no IP issue there. It's literaly - we're gonna setup an emulator for you with the provided ROM - which you could obtain legaly from a cratridge or a system you own.

"The lifespan for consumer goods is much more than our phones and computers, this is a very different way of maintaining lifecycle," Schneier said.

Other then a few companies - most consumer goods won't survive beyond 10 years - at best. There are a few manufacturers where you tell them you have their machine that is 20 years old they go - yeah that is expected lifetime for it. But most are like 5-7 years...

Re: Plus sign in email addresses is often fun

Quite a few users have raved about it how good the user experience was in Notes(compared to Outlook).

At the same time - read plenty of horror stories from the admin side. And given my own experience with the admin side of IBM products - would not surprise me - IBM needs to sort out the other end of the spectrum as well.

Re: Why is self-signed such a bad idea ?

I don't know about you but the pile of bits in my browser that claim they trust each other etc... yeah I don't trust. And stuff that happened over the years with some - not exactly confidence inspiring as well.

Make it obvious it's private

It sorta goes the same here in Slovenia.

Infact it goes a step further - all data on your work computer is technically protected.

But in certain cases an employer might need to gain access - in such a case things marked "private" are off limits to them completely(even if it's in your work mailbox - if it's a folder marked private - no touching).

If you don't do an offboarding process and have the worker pass over the data - they can sue you if you access that data afterwards.

Re: Quick - call a sociologist

Ease of use. That's the simple one - As someone who has been running dovecot and prosody for a while - I more or less gave up on xmpp - it's very clunky it doesn't do stuff as easily as it can - certain things like message history is lackluster etc...

Since I'm a gamer I've started using discord and I can put it in simple terms:

It's easy to setup, it has oth group chats and servers - basically it's an improved IRC.

Need to share a file with a person or group - attach it to the message. It's there.

The feel of it is not that far from IRC as well. Of course if you prefer you can go with a more "chat" like feel as well. It gives you that.

There is no "setup an account on some xmpp server" - it's simple - create account, use existing email, start using it.

The user experience is what counts now-a-days. This is the main reason people go to something. They try it out and start using it. Then invite friends.

An example from a friend that only recently started using discord - "This is what I like about WhatsApp - I can tell when my friend saw the message."

Honestly even users themselves often don't know what that killer feature is that they want.

daft

Relying on any system without a support contract/entity that would get such things fixed as a core system sounds like a daft idea.

You find a system that works with your setup and pay for that.

If I were to deploy something like that - first things first:

- Is there in house support from IT to support Linux based systems? No? Can they retrain, how much does it cost, what would be needed, would an external provider be able to assist until transition is done?

- How to do standard office things like mail(this one can be as easy as use google apps for business, or some other web based provider, if need in house find a system that either your team can manage with or a third party provider(open-xchange comes to mind(they offer support packages and such)), documents etc...

- Core business supporting systems - be it ERP, CRM, etc... etc... it's core to your business so you should have a support contract or at least some sort of business contact with whoever's software you are using - be it a cloud based solution, or some piece of software, if there is no business support available - don't use it. This isn't a hammer that will just work with no support.

People often forget that just because it's open source it doesn't mean it's free of costs. They are just elsewhere - software is free, and you get free support if you are willing to wait for responses from commuinty/do your own research. But if you need support on business critical things - then don't rely on that.

As someone who loves open source and software available for it even I need to look at the business case for everything I suggest to the company be it storage(go with $random server and disks or a dedicated storage system from a known storage vendor), be it servers, firewall etc...

My condolences

And yeah the disconect is important.

Each year I get asked by my boss if I want a work phone - each time my answer is the same - if you consider I need a cell phone that I'll leave in the office after I head home - then sure - otherwise it's a waste.

I work while at work - outside of that - you do not exist for the most part. Sure I'll pull in the hours if needed and even respond to an occasional chat for help. But for me that world generally doesn't exist when I leave the office.

I do this as a sysadmin - when trying to help our devs sort out issue and figure out if it's a systems or a devs prob - I'd sit down with them and they would show me stuff and then we would go through stuff more or less line by line.

It's one of the more fun aspects of my work to be honest. As frustrating as it can be at times it's fun.

Guess it helps that most of my learning of coding was through pseudo code(some actual coding as well but the good stuff was the pseudo code stuff) and actually tracing through that required pen and paper to solve at times.